Here’s a nice, old Department of Public Works stamp on the east side of Horton just north of Michigan, next to the Gabriels Community Credit Union on the corner. I had meant to get this one for ages and finally decided to do it tonight despite it being after dark.
I brought a flashlight with me and propped it up on some gravel alongside the sidewalk. (Flashing a light straight on the stamp usually makes it illegible. You need shadows.) I know from seeing it in daylight that the year is 1919. I had previously been complete unable to read the month, but when I came home and looked at the photo this time I realized I was pretty sure I saw September there. It’s funny how sometimes a photo can see things I don’t see with my eyes.
Looking south on Horton. That’s the Gabriels Community Credit Union on the left. You can see the flashlight I was using to illuminate the stamp on the lower left.
This Department of Public Works stamp is on the west side of Regent Street between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth (400 block). It’s a typical 1940s DPW stamp, quite worn. The date is hard to read and apparently harder to photograph.
That one isn’t too interesting on its own. What’s interesting is the matching one adjacent to it on the driveway apron of the property (see below).
This one is placed diagonally on the corner of the driveway apron, and the date is a lot clearer. This is interesting to me because although I’ve seen driveway aprons with stamps here and there, this is the first one I’ve noticed with a DPW stamp. I’m surprised that the DPW would have been involved in replacing someone’s driveway apron, unless some kind of city work is what caused it to need replacement.
Looking north on Regent Street. The closest sidewalk slab has the stamp, plus the driveway of course.
This DPW variation can be found on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue a short distance south of Michigan Avenue. It is alongside the Hot Water Works hot tub dealer.
No “Lansing” this time, just DPW. I like the design. I always think outlined stamps look smart. I still hope to narrow down when they quit using DPW (or DPS?) and switched to the undated O&M stamps.
I’m sorry the flash washed this out a bit because it really is a beautifully-preserved stamp, especially the date, from when they still stamped a month. It is on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Fernwood and Vine.
The block itself is a bit cracked due to having been heaved up, but not too bad.
Here’s a puzzling one. I wish I had more time to poke at it tonight, but I’m an hour from bedtime and two hours from being done with my paying work. I was walking east on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Ferguson and Custer, and ran across what looked like a dated-but-unsigned stamp. Of course, I knew that it surely originally had a name on it, but it was strange for the date to still be clear and the name to be completely gone. I bent down to look closely and could not make out the slightest impression in the blank part of the oval.
The western stamp.
I walked a short distance further east and found the paired stamp facing the other direction. This time I could make out letters, but they raised further questions.
The eastern stamp.
It looks to read “L.P.W.” The L is pretty difficult to read and I’m willing to consider that I may be wrong on that, but the P and W are distinct. Lansing Public Works? It seems likely, though they were stamping “Lansing DPW” at least through part of the 1940s. That’s not the puzzling part, though. The puzzling part is that I just recently discovered a Lansing DPS stamp from 1950 and had inferred that the Department of Public Works had become the Department of Public Service around that time. (Today it is the Public Service Department.)
Looking east on East Michigan Avenue. The “unsigned” stamp is at the bottom.
Adding further intrigue to this is the fact that I have found an item in the Lansing State Journal Community Digest of July 2, 1993, advising citizens that the Lansing Department of Public Works was offering phone book recycling.
Oho! Now what do we have here? A DPW variation I haven’t seen before – sort of. It’s on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue just north of Michigan. The style is similar to the 1940s DPW stamps, but it says Lansing DPS instead. So, around 1950 Lansing apparently went from having a Department of Public Works to having a Department of Public Service. Today we have a Public Service Department, but the stamps specify O & M or Operations and Maintenance, one of the divisions of Public Service.
Looking south on North Magnolia, toward Michigan Avenue.
I decided to take a walk through the Urbandale neighborhood on this lovely, warm, fall evening. Urbandale was long ago the site of a race track, which was sold to developers in the (nineteen-)teens and made into a neighborhood despite the fact that it is in the 100-year floodplain and has been subjected to damaging floods and evacuations. People have trouble getting insurance because of this and so a lot of houses were abandoned and became derelict. So many houses were torn down over the years that a good chunk of the neighborhood is now community gardens and small farms. The Land Bank is big on those. Anyway, here’s the sidewalk stamp of the day, located on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue between Marcus and the dead end (500 block).
I know, I know. “Another DPW stamp? Yawn.” But I am still trying to narrow down when they switched stamp styles. This one complicates things. It uses the style of the 1940s and later stamps, but I have a stamp logged from 1939 that uses the older-style “Department of Public Works” stamp. That one is quite worn and perhaps I misread the date, but I am pretty sure I have seen other 1930s stamps in this style. I will have to look for a clearer one to confirm.
Looking south on Magnolia. I believe I’m standing on the slab I photographed above. Note the several white colored slabs; those are all brand new ones from White Hawk.
Kind of a boring discovery, I know, but I’m intrigued by the mystery of the (possibly) overlapping dates for the two styles of stamps.
I walked a different route from usual which took me to the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect, instead of the west side where I more often walk. And look what I found there.
So the oddly placed 1921 DPW stamp on Regent Street isn’t unique or a misfire after all. There are stamps from both before and after this one that are more conventionally placed. There is even another one from 1924. So my new hypothesis is that there was one particular foreman in the 1920s who liked it this way.
Too bad about the crack; it’s otherwise very clear. It also gives me my new latest date for DPW stamps marking the month as well as the year.
At least I think it’s 1941. That’s what it looks like in person. It’s an extremely worn DPW stamp (I recognize it by the shape and typography of the letters), located on the east side of Regent Street (200 block) between Kalamazoo and Michigan. Funny how unevenly they have worn, given that there are 1930s ones on the same block that are much more legible.
Tired of Regent Street stamps yet? I hope not, because you’re probably going to get more of them. How about Department of Public Works stamps? Same there; I want to see if I can figure out when they transitioned from one style of stamp to the next over the years.
Looking north on Regent.
The slab is a small one, odd sized. You run across truncated ones like this, both older and newer, and I’m not sure how they come about.
Here’s an old DPW stamp, on the north side of Eureka Street between Lathrop and Clifford, and for a change I can read the month on it: May.
Figuring out when they quit stamping a month with the year will be interesting. It looks like they had already quit stamping the exact date, which they did at least through most of 1918.
